Page 100 of The Seven Year Slip

He gave me a look and pointed down at the dessert. “I’m going to make the goddamn lemon pie. The dry ice noodles are staying, though,” he added, a little quieter.

The edges of my mouth twitched into a small smile. I liked the lighting in here now, it turned everything hazy and lovely. Romantic. “I think that’s a good trade,” I replied, still looking at the menu. Smiling at it, really. Because he’d also added another dish.Pommes frites. “Huh? What did you say?”

He knelt down beside me, a hand on my knee, so that we were eye level with each other. He was just so handsome, I wanted to trace the lines of his face, I wanted to sketch the sharpness of his jawbone, I wanted to paint the color of his hair. This scene wouldgo in the section of the travel guide labeled “Scenic Spots” because I wouldn’t get tired of looking at his face for years—decades. I wanted to watch it age, I wanted to see what kind of wrinkles knitted into his smiles.

“Is this what you imagined?” he asked, turning his gaze across the restaurant. “After you reminded me that what made that meal perfectwasmy granddad, I looked around, and I started to wonder which parts of this restaurant were me.”

I shook my head. “It was all you, every second of the way. I was wrong.”

“Not completely,” he replied, and pulled me to my feet again. “The chairs were a bad idea—they were way too uncomfortable.”

“They were,” I admitted in relief.

“And the lighting was too bright and unforgiving—like I put everyone in a spotlight. But,” he added, “unlike the dishwasher seven years ago, I know that I like the idea of small tables—they’re intimate—but perhaps the white was a little too arrogant.” He pulled me into the middle of the restaurant and stood behind me, wrapping his arms around my middle, his chin on my shoulder, as he slowly turned me to a blank space on the wall in the middle of the restaurant. “It’s for you, if you ever find the inspiration to put something there.”

I pressed my fingers tightly around his at my waist, my lips pressed together as tears stung at my eyes. “Really?” I whispered, and felt him nod against my shoulder.

“Really. All my life, I’ve wanted to make a place that felt comfortable—it’s what I always worked toward. A place where people can come, and eat perfect meals with their granddads, and feel at home. This Hyacinth is me. Not the me from seven years ago, not the press release version of me—but me. And you helped me remember that, Lemon.”

I turned in his arms, and looked up at this lovely man, a blend of an idealistic dishwasher and an experienced chef de cuisine, part little boy whose perfect meal was a plate of French fries, and part man who made the most delicate lemon pies.

“And I love,” he went on, “how every piece of this restaurant now tells a story—how the ambiance is the narrator. And this story is about the past”—he pressed his forehead against mine—“meeting the present.”

“Or the present meeting the past,” I reminded.

He brought my hand up to his lips and kissed it. “And the present meeting the present.”

“And”—I smiled, reminded of that girl sitting in a shared taxi—“the past meeting the past.”

“I think I’m in love with you.”

I blinked. “W-what?”

“Clementine.” And the way he said my name just then felt like a promise, a vow against loneliness and heartache, and I could listen to the way his tongue wrapped around the letters of my name for the rest of my life, “I love you. You’re stubborn, and you worry a little too much, and you always get this crease between your eyebrows when you’re thinking, and you see parts of people they don’t see in themselves anymore, and I love the way you laugh, and the way you blush. I loved the woman I met in apartment B4, but I think I love you a little bit more.”

I swallowed the knot in my throat. My heart felt bright and terribly loud in my ears. “You do?”

He snagged my chin, turning my face up toward his, and whispered, “I do. I love you, Lemon.”

I felt like I could float right off into the sky. “I love you, too, Iwan.”

He leaned close, the smell of aftershave heady on his skin. “I’m going to kiss you now,” he rumbled.

“Please.”

And he kissed me there, in the stolen moments of a Wednesday evening, in a restaurant that felt like his soul, and his kiss tasted sharp and sweet, like the beginning of something new. I smiled against his mouth, and I whispered, “And here I thought you’d find romance in a piece of chocolate.”

He rumbled a laugh. “A girl I once met swore she’d had it in a good cheddar.” His hands sank down to my waist, and he began to sway me a little, back and forth, to the sound of some invisible song. “What would you like tonight, Lemon?”

I kissed him again. “You.”

“Fordinner!” He laughed, throwing his head back, and then he said, a bit softer, “Thenyou can have me.”

“You won’t judge me?”

“Never.”

“I want a PB&J.”

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